And that was the whole trouble, really. Father was the Secretary, Mother was the Secretary's wife, Sister was the daughter of the Secretary. Everybody was wrapped up in it. Except George.
George loved Gistla.
"Why don't you find yourself some nice little American girl?" his father had said. "Say like Henry Farrel's little daughter?"
Henry Farrel's little daughter was a sweet sickening girl with a nasty temper and a nasty tongue. Her father was Governor of the Colony. She told you about it all the time.
"Or," his father had told him, "why not little what's-her-name, Doug Brentwood's daughter?"
Little what's-her-name's father was the President of the Council. "My father is President of the Council," she said. Over and over, as though in a settlement the size of the Colony, there would be anyone who wouldn't know her father was the President of the Council.
It was all a very tight and careful circle, chosen on Earth with a great deal of "common sense."
There were the ordinary settlers, of course. They had daughters. Some of them were very pretty and long-limbed. And George had thought about that.
Certainly there wasn't a decent-looking girl in the whole Governing circle, and the sight of a girl with flashing eyes and a nice red mouth, who was shaped a little like something besides a tree stump, was indeed an exciting sight.
But there were limitations to the settler girls.